by L. K. Rigel
The Days looked confused, unsure if this might be a bad joke. Mal couldn’t think about that. She needed to get Garrick to put Beastie down.
“Mallory.” Garrick giggled. “I chose you for your name alone. You supply the nice story, the illusion of order people need to go on living in chaos: Samael has restored the Imperium to us! Once again, the world will be ruled by a leader chosen by god to take his rightful place at the top of the Great Chain of Being. Don’t you see the people need that certainty?”
Beastie whimpered. Garrick clucked and petted him. “Celia and the emissary planned it all, but they chose the wrong city. I know they meant you for Allel. She always chooses Allel. But I’ve beat her to it. I’ve claimed the legend ahead of her. Phoenix and dragon always rule.”
He couldn’t possibly know about her totem. “Please put down my dog.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” He threw the dog into the wall. Beastie made a sound like a squeeze toy and slid to the floor.
“Beastie!”
“My lord.” Pala was at the door to the antechamber. “King Harold has asked to see you in the main hall.”
Garrick grunted. He didn’t even look at Mal as he walked through the door. Pala followed, but Garrick stopped and held up his hand. “Keep milady comfortable until I return.”
As soon as Garrick was gone, Mal ran to Beastie and picked up his limp little body. “Beastie, no.” The blow had killed him instantly. It couldn’t be true. She slid to the floor with his body in her arms. “Beastie.”
“I’m sorry, Mal.” Pala put his arm on her shoulder, and the Days were too stunned to object. Tears streamed down Mal’s face. “There is no time.” Pala said. “You and the KP must come with me now.” He and Saskia lifted her to her feet. He tried to take Beastie, but she wouldn’t let him.
They moved through service corridors. It would be too unwieldy to use the cloth and carry Beastie too. Oh, Beastie! She was quiet, but her tears kept coming.
It was snowing at the dirigidock, but luckily there was no wind. Pala said, “Get into the Angel’s Harp. The other chalice is on board. King Harold is stalling Garrick.”
“Pala, you’ll be in danger for helping me.”
“No doubt!” He laughed his old gleeful laugh. “I’m finished with this life anyway. I’m off to the wild. I’ll see you again. I’m truly sorry about your dog.” He hugged her and whispered, “There are people who know. We’ve always known.” And then he ran into the citadel.
Mal and Saskia hurried up the stairs to the Angel’s Harp.
“What an adventure!” Kairo was waiting for them. “Isn’t Harold marvelous?”
Mal fell into a seat with Beastie, and Saskia sat down across from her.
Kairo kept watch. “Here he comes – don’t look! Garrick is with him. And that Father Jesse. He just gave Harold something. They’re shaking hands, very friendly. Harold can’t stand Garrick, you know. Never liked old Garrick, either. He’s on the stairs. Thank Asherah, Garrick and the priest are going back inside.”
Harold burst through the door, jumped onto the winding stairs beside the galley, and headed up to the pilot’s deck. A Hibernian guard swung the door shut. With the hum of the oscillation turbines, everyone felt calmer.
Kairo sat down by Mal. “What did we ever see in that guy?” She saw Mal’s swollen face then and knitted her eyebrows together. “What’s wrong with Beastie?”
Saskia’s Secret
Once the Angel’s Harp was well away from Garrick’s airspace, Harold rejoined them from the pilot deck. With the tenderness of a man who’d also lost someone he loved, he lifted Beastie’s stiffening body from Mal’s arms.
“We’ll put him in a safe place now, fair play?”
She’d stopped sobbing, but another gush of tears rolled down her cheeks as he handed sweet little Beastie to a burly Hibernian guard.
Harold ordered stout for Kairo and hot coffee and whiskey for everyone else.
“All right then. Who’s going to tell me what happened back there? Madam King’s Physician? You seem to have a grip on events.”
Saskia downed half her hot drink in two gulps. “Garrick was planning to kill Mallory so she couldn’t breed for other cities.”
“Great gods.” Kairo rested her hand on Harold’s forearm.
But Mal knew that wasn’t everything. Earlier, when Saskia had been standing outside the door listening to Garrick and Lady Bron, her fury wasn’t over a plot against a breeder. It had been personal.
“What did you mean, Saskia, when you said not again?”
Saskia looked away and finished her drink. After a deep sigh, she said, “All right, I’ll tell you. Maybe at last someone will believe me.”
Harold motioned for another drink for Saskia.
“I am from Garrick. My father was a bureaucrat in the gridcom works. My mother – let’s just say my mother was a social climber. She was obsessed with status and appearance. She made me dye my hair brown because she was ashamed of its lack of pigmentation. I’m sure that’s why Garrick didn’t recognize me.
“Mother ingratiated herself to the court and somehow arranged that I would be Counselor’s official companion.”
“Garrick’s sister who died.” Mal said.
“Garrick’s sister. We were the same age. By accident, my mother had finally done something nice for me. Counselor and I were friends from the start. We did everything together. We even bled bleeders at the same time.”
One of us. Mal and Kairo glanced at each other.
“We had gotten away from the citadel. We liked to escape the servants and the courtiers. We’d go up to the falls, above the smog line, and run through the trees with dirt under our feet.”
“Weren’t you afraid of raptors?” Kairo said.
“A little. But …”
“It was worth it.” Mal finished Saskia’s sentence.
“Just to be free for a few hours was, yes, worth the risk. We were careful, and there are worse things than raptors.”
How well Mal knew that now.
“We’d both started a third month of bleeding, and neither of us had told anyone else. She wasn’t sure how the king would react, and I didn’t want all the attention my mother would bring down on me. That day, we’d gone up to the falls to talk about it and think what to do.”
“I had climbed down for water. Coming back, I saw Garrick standing with her at the edge of the falls. His arm was raised, and a flash of sunlight caught the blade in his hand. It was her own dagger, from her breeder.”
“Coward,” Harold said.
“I was the coward. I froze. He stabbed her again and again as she clung to him, until finally he let go and she slid to the ground.”
“He washed the blade with water from his canteen and returned it to the sheath strapped to her thigh. Then he kicked her – kicked her! – off the ledge.”
“The dagger he wears in her memory.” Mal wanted to give Saskia a hug, tell her she understood. But Saskia wasn’t the hugging type.
“He’s a monster,” Kairo said.
“He wanted to be king.” Saskia shrugged. “If a counselor bleeds …”
“The queen clause.” Mal and Kairo said together.
“He never saw me. When I told my parents, they didn’t believe me. Didn’t want to. My mother said I was imagining things. Garrick would never hurt his own sister. Her body was found, ravaged by the river and by predators. Too decomposed for wounds to tell the tale.
“I didn’t speak about it again until I had been at Red City for some time. I told Sister Jordana. Red City took my mother’s view.”
“What about Harriet, didn’t she believe you?”
“That’s right. I forgot you like her.”
Mal shifted in her chair. Of course she liked Harriet. She loved Harriet. Everyone loved Harriet.
“Harriet never knew about it. Jordana believed me. She said no one else would, and she was right.”
“But you were a bleeder,” Kairo said. “People would listen
to you.”
Mal smiled at Kairo’s naiveté.
“I was nobody. It was my word against the future king of Garrick.”
“It’s true.” Mal said. “Like with this princess nonsense. People choose belief over knowledge all the time.”
King Harold and Kairo laughed at the joke. Saskia did not.
Mal realized that Saskia knew.
She hadn’t been too preoccupied to notice the cloth or anything else. Those neon blue eyes, cool and dark, knowing and ungenerous, burned into Mal with what they knew.
“Saskia, why did you agree to be my KP?”
“With Red City, murder is acceptable.” Saskia uttered a bitter laugh. “But this power grab is a different matter. Durga is afraid Garrick means to use this princess nonsense to install his heirs as a restored Imperial Family. If something happened to you at the end of the contract, Garrick would have the only valid claim on Imperial heirs.”
“That shibdung,” King Harold said.
“He could re-centralize the world government under a new Imperium and be powerful enough to crush Red City.”
“But you didn’t take that job to save me or Red City.”
“No. Red City wanted to use me to monitor Garrick’s plans. I took the job to save myself. I couldn’t handle the whole Triune Contract thing. I left Red City the day you arrived. I don’t know if you remember that, Mallory.”
“You’re pretty unforgettable.”
“Durga promised to wipe out my debt to Red City if I kept you safe. She knew how much I hated Garrick. For me, it was a double win: ruin Garrick’s plan and be free of Red City forever.”
She should be grateful to Durga for her life, but Mal knew the Matriarch had only acted to protect Red City.
“Wait a minute,” Kairo said. “Red City knew Garrick was a murderer, and they let one of us accept his bid?”
Harold lifted her hand and kissed it like a courtier. “My dear, politics is a hard game. I thank the gods that monster never came near you.”
Tribunal
Balanced at the edge of his throne, Garrick’s eyes shone with bewildered pain. He wore formal black. A red and white sash of office and a gold and onyx coronet signified his royal status. Like an unsettled lion, he kept shifting his position.
The dagger strapped to his calf glittered when the rubies caught the light. He was a wounded, charismatic beast.
The gridvid loved him.
His gaze darted to Mal from the larger-than-life monitor, and she jumped.
“He’s not here, Mal.” Nin was with her at the respondent’s table. Garrick wasn’t in Red City. He was looking into a camera, attending the proceedings via the grid.
The tribunal hall was full, and still spectators kept coming in. Harriet refused an interview to the gridvid crew while Roh and Claire got past them unnoticed. King Harold wasn’t so lucky. The tall and skinny documentarian put a hand on the king’s shoulder and guided him toward the camera.
Harriet, Roh, and Claire took the seats Mal and Nin had saved for them in the front row.
“I knew this would be packed,” Roh said. “Who’d pass up the chance to see Father Jesse and the Matriarch in one place?”
“All the Concord Cities are watching,” Nin said. “Sister Marin is going to watch in Allel.”
Shibbit. Edmund and Counselor would be watching too.
Nin glanced up at the monitor. “What did I ever see in that guy? My proof was probably ruined by the pure evil of his seed.”
“Ninshubur.” Sister Jordana had just come in from the judge’s chambers. “You are aware the petitioner and respondent tables are wired for the gridvid?”
Sister Jordana looked like she’d grown six inches taller. She wore loose black pants and a tight top that covered her left shoulder, hiding her mongoose totem. The top matched her bronze skin and showcased her bare right shoulder and her roses. The dramatic kohl around her eyes made her look like a queen of ancient times.
Serpent earrings wound about her ears, and in her left ear she wore an emerald stud. Her snake tattoo gleamed. Mal would wager she’d enhanced the colors. The snake seemed angry and alive in its circumnavigation of her neck and head. If you didn’t know her, you’d be very afraid.
Thank Asherah Sister Jordana was going to serve as Mal’s advocate.
There was more at stake than breaking the contract – and that might not even happen. The tribunal might declare it still in force. It was entirely possible they would send Mal back to Garrick, to breed for that monster who had killed Beastie and wanted to kill her too.
Lady Bron was Garrick’s advocate. She took her place at the petitioner’s table, smiling with aristocratic confidence. Mal sensed a bit of sadistic pleasure in the counselor. She was going to enjoy forcing the contract’s performance.
Like Sister Jordana, she was dressed to make a point.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense French braid. She wore simple black boots and a plain black calf-length dress with red and white piping that echoed Garrick’s sash of office. The dress covered her arms and had a high collar and conveniently obscured her lack of tats. Her make-up was subtle, and she wore no jewels.
It was a masterful ploy, but Sister Jordana’s genuine magnificence overpowered Lady Bron’s false humility. Would the tribunal panel appreciate that?
Mal scanned the room. Garrick in the monitor, Lady Bron and Sister Jordana, the gridvid crew and all the observers – this was all like a play that would present only a version of reality. Whatever was told here would become the official story. A lie would serve as well as the truth, and it was all beyond her control.
But she wasn’t alone in this. Her friends were with her.
The monitor switched to side-by-side live shots of the two advocates. Lady Bron and Sister Jordana kept their expressions as fixed as masks. At a single shot of Sister Jordana, a murmur of pride ran through the spectators who were predominantly from Red City.
The shot dissolved to the documentarian speaking directly into the camera. The rosebud tattoo on his forehead clashed with his grave self-importance. The sound was turned off, but Mal read the word Garrick on his lips.
Nin’s face filled the screen with her comment about Garrick’s evil seed. From the tittering response in the hall, it was apparent that many observers were wearing earbuds.
The monitor showed Mal laughing, but it was a picture from earlier, when she and Nin had first greeted. It was cut in to look like Mal was laughing at the evil seed remark.
How unfair. It felt like a betrayal by the documentarian.
The picture on the monitor switched back to Garrick, but it was just a shot of his empty throne.
Harold had finished his interview and sat down beside Harriet. He wore the Hibernian coronet, bright cut gold and fine strands of silver with emeralds and diamonds; his clothes were of green linen and gold braid. Not so close to his deathbed as Kairo described – but then Mal had been wrong about that with Ma.
The footage of Harold’s interview came up on the monitor. The documentarian looked unhappy with his responses. Mal wished she had earbuds. She reached out for Harold’s forearm and squeezed it with gratitude.
The hall was overflowing, and many had to stand. People wanted to see the Matriarch and the priest who could see souls. Beyond that, no one had ever attempted to break a Triune Contract. No wonder the proceedings were going out on the gridvid.
A phalanx of guards marched in through the double doors and lined the room’s perimeter. Mal recognized their captain as the one who’d sent over a bottle of champagne in the board room on the day of Garrick’s bid. She wore an earpiece with an extended microphone. Her floppy red bailiff’s hat would look ridiculous if she – and the matter at hand – weren’t so serious.
She pushed a button on the device. “All rise.”
Her voice over the loudspeakers was lovely and authoritarian. “Visitors will leave the hall in an orderly fashion.”
Everyone groaned.
“As a
reminder, no unapproved recording or monitoring devices are allowed in the hall.” She gave Mal a thumbs-up sign. “Visitors will be allowed to retake their seats when the room is secured.”
“They shouldn’t have laughed.” Nin screened her mouth with her hand so no camera could catch her. “No one would have known they were wearing earbuds.”
King Harold ignored the guards. As a sovereign, he wasn’t subject to search.
Harriet also stayed in her seat. “Let them try to search me. Unless they’re looking for blood oranges, I can’t help them.” A younger guard did start heading for Harriet, but the bailiff-captain waved her off.
Mal pointed to the dark glass recessed in the ceiling where the cameras must be hidden. The monitor picture switched to a live shot of her and Nin looking at the camera. Nin stuck her tongue out, but the camera missed the grand gesture.
It jumped to Kairo, Saskia, and Father Jesse entering the witness box.
“Shibadeh,” Nin said. “Has Kairo gone native?”
Setting aside Kairo’s Asian-heavy genome from the Steppes, she looked like a Hibernian goddess from ancient times. A delicate gold net cascaded down her back from a circlet of hammered bronze Celtic crosses. Her green linen mantle was embroidered with gold and silver harps and shamrocks.
Nin had a point; in that outfit, Kairo represented Hibernia more than Red City.
Saskia’s hair was super-spiky today. Maybe she made it that way on purpose when she was really mad. Her makeup was garish. She had a lot of black on her eyes and bright red lipstick. She seemed full of rage and defiance, and Mal loved her for it.
The judges emerged from chambers and the guards closed the doors. On the raised dais, Durga sat in the center. To her right was an ancient KP Mal had never heard of. The third judge was King Michael of Castlegar. They wore official uniforms of their individual offices and red tribunal stoles draped over their shoulders.
The bailiff called the proceedings to order. “First order of business: Motion to Dismiss filed by Queen Chiyo of Nihon.”
The motion accused the panel of partiality, as all three judges were from the western hemisphere.